I will try to add something almost every day. It is a challenge to me to engage, to observe more actively, to document, to share, and hopefully, to provoke you, who might be reading this, to do the same ... a give and take I hope

Monday, April 21, 2008

vent

today's "warm-up"[I put a quote on the board every day and ask the students to write about it. Really original I know-- but I love quotations and I love asking the students to do short bursts of creative writing.]"All the world's a stage,and all the men and women merely players,They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts."William Shakespeare

now, a real-life line from the play that is my life today:one student, let's call him Deantoine, just joined the class last week. He tells me he was in prison before. "Okay," I say, "welcome."He keeps repeating, "this lady I used to know used to always cook me cow brains, cow ass, and cow tongue. The ass was the best. Tasted real good. Blue balls!"

He is switching it up with metaphors about what his cell roommate used to smell like. "Cow shit, cow ass, cow manure." I told him it was good he was using similes and poetic language but that he could "benefit from more varied diction-- word choice." Now he is reading the dictionary.

We have been reading Borges' "The Circular Ruins" which deals with one man fashioning another being of his own design. Hmmmnn... it's kind of like being a teacher. On a good day.